Category Archives: Fascism

“I was trying to think about the last time American history seemed to matter as much as it seems to right now. We’re minding our past in debates over monuments and standing or kneeling during our national anthem, aren’t we essentially asking ourselves over and over what it means to be an American? We’re testing our arguments, our old ones and new ones, we’re staking claims for ourselves and our families and whatever comes of this place we call home. Yeah, we can think of this as a fight I guess, or we can think of this as part of our natural destiny. We claim to be founded on ideas, well maybe this is how an enlightenment nation grows. How we settle the great divide will be the stuff our grandchildren will be reading about. And I suppose we do have this much in common; surely we want to make them proud.” – David Brown –The Texas Standard for Friday September 29, 2017

I have no use for football. I realize that I’m committing a cardinal Texas sin by saying that, but it is the truth. I don’t play it, I don’t watch it, I don’t care about it at all. I don’t know who won the Superbowl last year. I have no idea who is doing well or poorly or has done well or poorly since I moved out of my dad’s house as a teenager and stopped having to endure football viewing in order to watch anything on TV with him. However, I do know a thing or two about football because of those years of enforced viewing with my father. I also know a thing or two about how to properly treat a flag because of him and his desire that I spend time in the Boy Scouts as child.

The attending audiences at these giant government-funded sports arenas are shocked! How dare these players protest the treatment of black people by racially biased police departments! How dare they protest in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick who was excluded from playing this year after he dared take a knee in political protest last year!? These players are disrespecting the flag! They can’t be allowed to protest like this!

In the week since I wrote the original post [about Colin Kaepernick] on Facebook I’ve received literally tens of thousands of responses. The overwhelming majority are positive, notes of encouragement and understanding, enthusiastic and even reluctant agreement. It makes me proud to note many of those responses came from veterans, from cops, and from Americans who put their asses on line for their fellows every day without expectation of reward or thanks. They may not agree with Kaepernick, but they stand with him nonetheless as true Americans do. A number came from non-Americans, those on foreign shores who look to America with equal parts fear and fascination and wonder at that shining city on the hill and it makes me proud that they can still admire this nation for what it is supposed to represent.

But in that same week I’ve daily posted a roster of those who don’t get it. Those who wrote me, many who claim to be veterans, who called me traitor and called Kaepernick nigger and who have daily sent me death threats and seething hate simply because I spoke of honor and duty and respect. It is these people, these haters, these dimwitted goons, who prove with their own words the validity and necessity of Kaepernick’s protest and why I stand with him.

These protesters, these professional football players aren’t disrespecting the flag, they are disrespecting the outrage of the fans who demand that their sport be free of politics. Free of politics that the votes of the fans have brought directly into conflict with the players on the field. The people who are booing? They are fans of the OHM as well as football; and I say this because only people dumb enough to believe that a billionaire wouldn’t line his own pockets at their expense would believe that you can isolate a sport and keep it from reflecting the world around it.

So let’s talk about respecting the flag and the nation, since I don’t care about football and really wouldn’t be writing this post if it was really all about football or the fans of football. Study the image in this post. Please notice the flag bunched up around the ring of the field in the foreground. Do you see it?

The US flag is not to touch the ground. US flags should not be bunched up or crumpled. How do I know? It’s right there in the flag code. I hear you asking there’s a flag code? Yes. Yes there is a flag code, as the most rudimentary search of the internet should reveal. Here is a link to the text on wikipedia. This should be common knowledge for anyone interested in seeing the flag of your nation treated with respect. Follow the code and you are respecting the flag; don’t follow the code and you run the risk of making a mockery of the flag.

Most national flags and battle flags are not to be allowed to lay on the ground. It is one of the highest forms of disrespect to treat a flag the way this flag is being treated, whether this is common practice or not at your average sports event. I don’t think that can be said loudly enough to not be ignored by the politically blind in today’s United States. They know what they want to believe, emotionally. Your words will not carry meaning for them unless those words agree with the things they already believe. But the president of the United States is lying to the people who are booing from the stands at these sports events, and he’s doing it because it makes him look better agreeing with their outrage at being disrespected.

I don’t know how many people know this but the US flag was never worn as clothing until the 60’s when Abbie Hoffman wore it in protest and was arrested and tried for doing so. The way we treat the flag these days in almost all venues is disrespectful. It should not be allowed to fly in the rain. It should not be left hanging on the flagpole after dark unless spotlit. It should not be allowed to touch the ground, with various theories as to what you should do with the flag after it has been allowed to touch the ground (the wiki article addresses this urban legend) the answer being, get it off the ground when you see it touching the ground. That flag on the ground is being disrespected by every fan in the stadium because they do not rush out onto the field and see that it is lifted from the ground immediately.

So those guys taking a knee in protest? That is the least of the flag code offenses currently occurring in football stadiums, and their failure to assume the accepted position of obeisance before the attending audience should be understood as a protest against those self-same people. Maybe these audiences should worry about some of the other violations of the flag code first. The violations of law and common decency running rampant amongst the Misguided Appallingly Gullible Americans (#MAGA) who are the ones destroying the fabric of American society. Destroying it by calling for an end to political speech by professional football players. It might fix the players need to protest in the process.

A few days after I had written this, On The Media riffs on the same subject. The benefit of just sitting down and banging out some text. When I hit publish, it’s done. A podcast has to write and edit, then interview, re-edit and narrate connective segments, at least.

They understand that it’s not really about flags or football either. It’s really about controlling speech, limiting the speech of unpopular speakers. They also have more resources so they can dig deep on subjects that deserve to be revealed to the light of day.

That’s right. The Star-Spangled Banner was based on earlier works. It was part of a valued tradition of protest and counter-protests set to song. On The Media also touches on the important story that isn’t being discussed while the OHM rants on about football players and tearing up the first amendment.

The OHM finally deigned to go to Puerto Rico a few days ago as of this writing. I guess they finally had an air conditioned room they could put him up in for his required stay there. So he could be seen being presidential at the site of the hurricane’s destruction. I’m betting the people of Puerto Rico would have preferred he stayed in Washington D.C. and actually got to work doing the job he was elected to do. I wouldn’t hold my breath on that occurring anytime soon.

There are three other segments in that episode of On The Media, one of the podcasts on my must hear list. One that I take extra time to listen to closely. Brooke’s editing is a masterwork. She wastes no time on filler. Facts and more facts are ladled on in rapid succession. Pay attention, there will be a test later.

The idea to take a knee came from a US veteran who saw Kaepernick sitting at his first protest. This is an excellent little montage that explains the reason why taking a knee is not disrespecting the flag as much as calling for an end to protests is.